Revelation: Chapter 2, Verses 8 to 11
The Letter to Smyrna warned them of suffering to come, echoing in a way how groups and individuals today are hounded.
Chapter 2 begins Jesus’s, via John, instructions to the first seven Christian churches. The messages follow a pattern:
Identifying some feature of Jesus that John described at the start of Revelation.
Praising what they’re doing well (omitted if nothing to praise).
Noting where they’re going astray (omitted if they’re not).
Warning them of what will happen if they don’t mend their ways.
A promise of receiving some aspect of life after life after death if they repent.
Second up: the church in Smyrna, just north up the road from Ephesus.
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups and his newest book 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide, Revelation for Everyone. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
Unlike Ephesus and despite a 1922 massacre, churches have managed to survive in Smyrna (modern-day Izmir) and, according to Wikipedia, at least one Greek Orthodox church was re-established.
Question 3
“In the church at Smyrna, the Lord finds nothing to condemn. What seems to be the main focus of this letter?”
The church in Smyrna was not warned that they’d be wiped out, for Jesus through John, did not find fault with them. The letter only adjured them to remain faithful until death; then they’d receive “the crown of life” and would not face the second death. Since we cannot know about either of those, as their time has not yet come, we don’t really know if the church heeded sufficiently to receive the promise.
John said that “these are the words of the First and the Last,” which would’ve brought to mind both Jesus’s attributes as well as how Smyrna had been destroyed and rebuilt. I can’t think of anything relating to modern churches or cities in Canada that were destroyed and rebuilt; but people who’ve been gravely injured and return to play and work would be a metaphorical destroyed and rebuilt. And so these words could apply to us as much as to the early Christians in Smyrna.
The Lord noticed that they suffered and lived in poverty and that the local synagogue accused them of blasphemy. Lost to general knowledge is that at that time, various Jewish movements were at odds with each other, and early Christianity was not a separate religion.
“in the early church, Jewish to the core, some of the hardest questions came straight out…Who are the children of Abraham? Are they all his physical family (in which case, what about the descendants of Ishmael and Esau?), or the larger, worldwide family which God promised to Abraham?…The early church firmly clung to the ancient Jewish hope, and the ancient Jewish scriptures, and they claimed that they were all fulfilled in Jesus the Jewish Messiah.
Since the nub of the Christian faith was not that this was a new ‘religion,’ invented out of nothing, but rather that it was the fulfilment of the ancient promises to, and hopes of, the people of Israel, this immediately caused a problem [with the local synagogue].” (N.T. Wright is a first century scholar)
The letter predicted that they’d some would be thrown into prison and endure a (long?) time of affliction. And some would die as a result. This affliction was a test of their faith. Would they pass?
Is Faith Worth the Cost?
It seems quite a harsh test, yet without all the ones who endured and clung to their faith through the early centuries of persecution, Christianity would not have survived and grown to the billions today. Yet why was there persecution?
Whenever someone comes along and rocks the dogma boat, they get chucked overboard. It’s human nature. In Canada, being chucked means being vilified, ostracized, isolated. But in other countries, it still means torture and death.
Is it worth it? Was clinging to their faith through torture and violent death worth it to the Smyrnans?
The Lord in praising the church at Smyrna indicated it was so, for though they’d undergo physical death, their soul would survive. Their soul would not even face death at some point in the future.
We learn human beings face two deaths.
The first one, the mortal one, we all undergo and we all understand to some degree, even if North America has so come to fear it that Canada has encoded the false idea that we have final control over our life. It’s false if physical death is the only end. It’s false because too often being legally murdered by doctor is premature and curable alternatives exist. Just think about how standard medical care of brain injury stagnates in the 20th century, while treatments that restore a person and their network to play and work exist and work. The dogma that we have absolute control over our life is false because it presupposes that we social animals can make completely independent decisions untainted by the thoughts, words, and actions of others. Since our brains contain neurons and neural networks whose specific function is to measure closeness to others and neurons whose function is to mirror others, it’s impossible to make fully independent decisions. And it’s false because ending your life ends your relationships, and no one has absolute control over their relationships, the grief they leave behind, nor how their death will colour the memory of them.
When we presuppose material life ends, researchers don’t research death itself. Death has existed for millennia, so what’s there to study, right? Lots. Some who’ve studied death and life after death have accumulated much research, which goes ignored or dismissed because dogma says humans are wholly material and die once and the research contradicts that.
Wright interprets “the crown of life” as receiving the renewed life of God’s new age, the Resurrection. If death is really the first death and there is a second death, how many would willingly undergo it?
Would You Want to Undergo Soul Death?
You’ve passed through physical death and are in an unknown place whose zeitgeist is almost the opposite of what you’ve just been living in. You get to see your family and friends, maybe acquaintances and long-gone neighbours. You enjoy an environment that, according to some accounts, is tailer-made for you.
It’s kind of like Bluesky — everyone can read, reply, quote, like, and repost each other’s posts in a shared environment, but users’ data live in very different servers, some of which are controlled by the user and others by companies or Bluesky. You get to decide where your account and data live. Similarly, after death, your likes decide where you live while still being able to interact with others.
Ilnesses and injuries and pain don’t exist, at least not in the moments between death and that point of no return to life on Earth.
It’s a little head popping.
If you don’t want your soul to die and if you want release from this planet of eternal strife and hatred and fighting against dogma, then the Lord’s promise of not facing the second death, of receiving the crown of life, could empower you to stick it out until the mortal end. Let me know in the comments if the promise is powerful enough to keep you faithful?
For me, so far, apparently so.